with that let me introduce the moderator in this department correspondence of cnn who together have a wonderful interview with clinton yesterday. thank you. over to elise. [applause] we have a lot of distinguished guests in the audience. the deputy chief of mission for the embassy of lebanon. a lot of people who care about syria and looks to be a lively discussion this evening. in august, 2011 secretary of state hillary clinton called for the president bashar al-assad to step down for the sake of the syrian people. at that time about 2,000 people were killed. today that number of u.n. estimates has risen to more than 60,000 syrian is dead, hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled to turkey and jordan and iraq pleasing burdens on those countries, close to 2 million more, more than half have been displaced inside syria. what started as a brave stand has moved into a civil war with opposition forces becoming more radicalized, some of them would say infiltrated by extremist forces with links to al qaeda. the conflict threatens to destabilize the entire region and become a battleground